As the immortal Frank Sinatra sang about New York "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere", indeed SOBP did exactly that! I am pleased to report that we had a superlative annual meeting.  We hosted 1933 attendees, a new annual meeting record including another record of more than 600+ students. This latter achievement is particularly notable given our increasing and serious commitment to mentoring and fostering the development of the next generation of behavioral neuroscientists. And the feedback from our record attendance has been overwhelmingly positive. The scientific sessions were well attended and the plenary sessions thought provoking exactly as we hoped. Kudos to Jair Soares (Program Chair) and John Csernansky (SOBP President) for leading an outstanding meeting. And Kudos to the city that never sleeps for certainly contributing to the attraction. I hope those of you who are not members will participate in our ongoing growth and success by joining us as we lead behavioral neuroscience forward.

As part of a new venture, we launched a 'roving reporter' function at this meeting to provide highlights from specific sessions. Kristina Denisova, PhD and Jie Liu, PhD, both from Columbia U., served in this role for us and their reports are included below. I hope you sense from these young scientists their enthusiasm that was generated by meeting with senior people within SOBP. Enjoy their reports, please send feedback for this function and thank you for your participation in SOBP.

Best Wishes,

Steve Strakowski, MD

SOBP President Elect

Senior Vice President, Strategy & Transformation, UC Health

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychology and BME, University of Cincinnati

Brain Mechanisms of Atypical Development: Implications for Biomarkers / Two Autism Symposiums

By Kristina Denisova, PhD, Columbia University

NIMH's recent call to action that aims to shift research innovation and translation towards understanding fundamental mechanisms of disease (i.e., and not solely focus on mechanisms of intervention) was echoed at the brain systems level in two 2014 SOBP symposia on neurodevelopmental disorders. In "Towards Brain-based biomarkers of autism spectrum disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder" investigators presented studies on the role that brain imaging may play in both early detection and characterization of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Rajesh Kana, PhD presented several lines of evidence for altered brain environment in autism. Dr. Kana found aberrant neurochemical (proton spectroscopy; 1H-MRS), structural connectivity (diffusion tensor imaging, DTI), and functional (fMRI) indices in the same sample of individuals with autism, in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region supporting diverse task demands. Lucina Q. Uddin, PhD presented compelling work on salience network-based classification of ASD (using intrinsic functional connectivity methods), with classifier's performance validated in an independent sample of children with ASD. In "Pioneering Frontiers in Functional Brain Imaging for Psychiatry", researchers highlighted in-vivo techniques to examine modulation of brain circuits and early typical and atypical development. Adriana Di Martino, MD used resting-state fMRI during natural sleep to "stratify the heterogeneity of autism" in young children based on their verbal proficiency. Taken together, these approaches highlight the fact that autism is likely a systems-level disorder, entailing important implications for development of more targeted brain-based biomarkers in autism.

The Pregnant Woman

By Jie Liu, PhD, Columbia University  

in utero environment, leading to altered fetal programming. For example, a fetus of a woman experiencing distress tends to have a higher heart rate when mother is exposed to psychological stressors. Downregulation of placental 11β-HSD2 mRNA levels is a potential epigenetic pathway in mediating effects of maternal glucocorticoids. Dr. Katherine Wisner and Dr. Kara Driscoll introduced their studies on maternal depression and bipolar disorder during and after pregnancy respectively. Mood disorders over the course of pregnancy have been associated with a sequence of detrimental effects on fetal development and mother-infant interactions. Both researchers explained in detail the complexity surrounding treatment.  Continuation of medications ameliorates symptoms and therefore allows affected women to be actively engaged in pregnancy and child care. Gestational use of medications, however, may present risks to the neurodevelopment of fetus/newborn. Treatment decisions are indeed a risk-benefit assessment that should be performed in an individualized manner. Dr. Tim Oberlander further demonstrated supporting evidence that 5-HT function in offspring is shaped by maternal mood, antidepressant uses and 5HTT promotor(SLC6A4) polymorphisms.  Together, these investigators invigorated further discussion re: the management of this complex clinical and research problem.

Functional Connectomes Project

By Jie Liu, PhD, Columbia University

Dr. Michael Milham is the director of the Center for the Developing Brain at the Child Mind Institute. He is one of the pioneers in incentivizing neuroimaging community to collaboratively build the high throughput database, an initiative analogous to the Human Genome Project. In 2009, Dr. Milham and Dr. Bharat Biswa co-funded the 1000 Functional Connectomes Project (FCP), to make public more than 1300 resting-state fMRI datasets from 30 imaging centers. This project has since spawned high volume visits to FCP website and a multitude of research papers using FCP datasets. In 2010, Dr. Milham launched a fortified version of aggregate database--The International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative (INDI). The INDI shares phenotypic information with imaging data, diverse clinical and healthy populations, and prospective as well as retrospective data. The INDI has achieved landmark success in open-access sharing of large-scale datasets. The ADHD-200 Consortium, released in 2011, consists of imaging data collected from 351 children with ADHD and 571 healthy children. In 2012, the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange archived data from 539 participants with autism and 573 healthy controls. To advance openly sharing ongoing prospective data, the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample features over 200 datasets with a wealth of well-characterized phenotypic information at a pace of weekly upload. These collaborative efforts provide us an unprecedented opportunity to identify brain-based markers of normal brain-behavior development and illness-specific changes in brain functions.

NCATS

By Jie Liu, PhD, Columbia University

In echoing this year's theme of "Accelerating the process of scientific translation", SOBP-2014 invited Dr. Christopher Austin, the Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), to deliver a plenary session on how he leads the NACTS in response to the heightened need to facilitate translational sciences. As Dr. Austin envisions, the NCATS is "a catalyst, convener, adaptor, innovator, tragedy-of-the-commons occupier, NIH venture space, with core values of collaboration and demonstrably useful deliverables". Its translational aims are embodied in 3 key programs and initiatives, including the Clinical and Translational Science Activities (CTSA), Rare Diseases Research and Therapeutics, and Re-engineering the Translational Sciences. Specifically, the CTSA is committed to paving the way for transforming lab findings to clinical applications rapidly and economically. For example, the Clinical and Translational Science Awards program engages a network of more than 60 CTSA-funded research institutions nationwide in support of translational sciences. Likewise, the mission of Rare Diseases Research and Therapeutics is to encourage research on biological basis of rare disorders and cultivate treatment development which might exceed the capacity of any individual enterprise.  The Re-engineering the Translational Sciences acts as the frontline for injecting new technologies into translational sciences. Projects in progress include the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening initiative, the NIH Chemical Genomics Center and the Toxicology in the 21st Century program. The exemplary success from NCATS demonstrated that the scientific translation can be fruitful with coordinated efforts of experts from diverse disciplines.